In The Secret, the world's most popular and respected book, Darren Byrne shows us the essence of the "Law of Attraction" - "homogeneous attraction, same frequency resonance". It's a secret about energy.
Like people, each place also has its own unique energy, which resonates with the same frequency as the city, showing the unique beauty and soul of the city. In Shanghai, there is also an energy place - the West Bund.
In the process of rapid urban development, the West Bund takes "cultural leadership" as the strategy, leaving the best space for public cultural facilities, providing a platform for institutions such as art and design, so that people gradually have a high sense of belonging and identity to the West Bank. After nearly a decade of creation and precipitation, the West Bank is home to the finest artists, art venues and art events. Nowadays, whether it is Longmei, Oil Tank or West Bund Art Museum, it has become a "regular visitor" in the circle of friends, especially the West Bund Art Fair that art lovers look forward to every year, and has also become a "must-punch activity" that people flock to.
If the West Bank is an endless star, then the large and small art galleries scattered here are like stars, dotted, shining, and continuously injecting the vitality of art. The East Gallery is one of the bright stars.
In April this year, Zhang Ruyi, a young artist represented by East Gallery, will hold a solo exhibition at UCCA in Beijing. As The largest institutional solo exhibition of Zhang Ruyi in recent years, the exhibition will feature a series of the latest works commissioned by UCCA, further exploring and contemplating its tense binary relationship network of natural and man-made objects. In September, Zhang Ruyi and another post-85 artist, Zhang Yunyao, will participate in the 16th Lyon Biennale in France, showing the new thinking of young Chinese artists on contemporary art.
"Electrocution" with art
Founded in 2007, East Gallery was located in the Blackstone Apartments, known as the "City Hall of Culture", before settling on the West Bank. Now, in the East Gallery of the "new home", it has a more open interior space and environment. While investing more initiative in curating, the gallery continues to collaborate deeply with different institutions, supporting and assisting the development of important Chinese and international artists.
Cheng Xixing
Cheng Xixing, the founder of East Gallery, was born in Shanghai in the 1970s, not from an art family, but in her memory, in her spare time, she would go around with her parents to see the exhibition. In addition to happiness, art brought her, but also like a seed buried in her heart, quietly growing.
In Cheng Xixing's eyes, the development of modern art is a special stage, with huge differences and contradictory coexistence of various material and spiritual beings, which are entangled and intertwined, forming a unique phenomenon of artistic symbiosis. However, no matter what form of art, for her young age, it is like a "Pandora's treasure box", mysterious and unknown, enough to arouse her full desire to explore, and do her best to absorb the nutrients from art.
Before founding the East Gallery, for a period of time, Cheng Xixing did content related to urban style and architectural photography albums, and spent a long time wandering in video works, trying to find a breakthrough and "electrocute" art in another way. At that time, she already had the initial positioning and prototype of the gallery in her mind, "I hope that this gallery can embrace more young artists, grow with them, continue to promote, and achieve each other." ”
Hidden Maxima
All along, Cheng Xixing has been working hard to create the most suitable nurturing soil for young artists for their growth, using the East Gallery as the medium to provide a healthy development platform and taking going international as the "ultimate goal". Over the past ten years, from the first light of holding solo exhibitions, to the small fame after participating in group exhibitions with famous domestic and foreign artists, to the fame and international fame... Every step is not easy.
Booth 2021 Art021
At present, there are 15 artists represented by East Gallery, including Zhang Ruyi, Zhang Yunyao, Wang Ningde, Xiang Zhenhua, Qu Fengguo, Liu Ren, Lü Song, Hu Zi, Cao Zaifei, Chang Ling, Guo Haiqiang, Jiu Jiu, Li Shan, Zhang Peiyun, etc. "Today, the works of Zhang Ruyi, Wang Ningde, Zhang Yunyao and Hu Zi have been seen in many art capitals and have also been recognized and praised by overseas art markets." She told us with a smile that the smile was shallow and made people feel a sweetness that had persisted after going through the difficulties.
Young artists are like horses, and Cheng Xixing is the "Bole" with a pair of eyes. "The artists I choose to work with will mainly look at three points." Cheng Xixing shared, "First of all, he must have enough understanding of himself and have enough breadth and depth in observing society; secondly, the transformation ability of the work, only the reserve of knowledge, but there is no way to express ideas through the creation of the work, it is still futile; second, it is human, that is, art morality." And this "selection criterion" that she insisted on was also confirmed in the process of future development.
Artist Zhang Ruyi
Artist Zhang Ruyi is one of the "Maxima" she discovered. Zhang Ruyi's artistic creation exists in the logic of life, starting from internal intuition and revolving around the secret relationship between self-awareness, physical space, and daily observation. The artist extracts time slices and material information from real life, recombines, folds and compresses them, and presents the texture of the instantaneous "materialization" of the daily state.
In the past decade, Zhang Ruyi has explored two intertwined threads based on cacti and urban architecture and artificial space with the artist's own precise grasp and delicate perception of the language of sculptural materials. The works travel between artefacts, industrial experience and urban life, using "reality" as a "model", drawing out the individual's perceptual moment under urban change, and rooting it in the material, giving it meaning outside its form.
In the "Decoration" series in recent years, Zhang Ruyi dispatched people, objects, and places, trying to show her posture of becoming increasingly entangled with others and modifying each other. Zhang Ruyi constructs a "discourse device" through the relationship between man and reality, nature and industrial landscape, interrogating things with objects and interrogating space with space, thus fighting against calm.
Work "One Share"
To this day, Cheng Xixing still remembers the debut of Art Basel hong Kong in 2018 with Zhang Ruyi's works. In the "Art Exploration" exhibition area, Zhang Ruyi's work "One Plant" is presented, which integrates the artist's common architectural language and industrial materials to create a complete depth space.
"To highlight her work, we tiled the floor of the booth and made a door out of concrete, and when all the elements are combined, it forms a unique little solo exhibition, compatible with the big theme of the art exhibition, but with its own wonderfulness." Cheng Xixing recalled the scene at that time, and his memory is still fresh.
Solo exhibition "| Break"
Before Basel, Hong Kong, Zhang Ruyi was already well-known in China, in the 2014 solo exhibition "| Break", she used the relationship between cement and space, the most basic building materials such as concrete and barbed wire were kneaded into a number of cubes of different specifications to block and block, bringing a strong visual shock, evoking the audience's inner feelings and emotional resonance; in 2016, she brought a solo exhibition "Opposite The Building and the Opposite Building", through solidification, face-to-face visual arrangement, to promote the individual, The interaction between the external world and physical space...
"Every time, the appearance of Zhang Ruyi's works brings a very shocking visual effect, and at the same time, it can arouse the audience's inner emotions and resonance." I think that's where artists are best. Cheng Xixing sighed.
The "Freedom of Materials" of Contemporary Art
With the continuous development of contemporary art, art is moving in the direction of diversification, whether it is artistic creation or the institutional environment has undergone tremendous changes, and the boundaries between various art disciplines have become more and more blurred, and behind this change is the change in cultural appeals.
2021 Frieze London - Main Exhibitors
Time back to 2006, when Chinese contemporary art first appeared on sotheby's and Christie's night shots, that moment became the "highlight moment" of Chinese contemporary art. Since then, more and more young Chinese artists have appeared on the international art stage.
Today, Chinese contemporary art has shown a trend of pluralism, microcosm, fragmentation and individualization in the context of internationalization. On the other hand, the problems that young artists are concerned about are becoming more fragmented, more and more diverse, and the characteristics of individualization are becoming more and more obvious, and the materials used in creation are becoming more and more abundant, realizing true "material freedom".
Artist Zhang Yunyao
This feature is vividly reflected in Zhang Yunyao's body. Years of painting experience have led Zhang Yunyao to question the traditional forms (even rituals), expression habits and behavioral conventions of painting, and he often does the opposite, realizing his individual expression in a new state.
For Zhang Yunyao, the use of felt as a medium in his creative system is the key. In the process of completing the individual expression, he first perfects himself. At the same time, with the help of the mutual transformation of the relationship with the "felt", the cognition and transformation of the role of the self are completed.
2019 "Out of the Temple" jointly presented by Joe Space and East Gallery
Talking about Zhang Yunyao, the first thing that broke into Cheng Xixing's mind was the "Out of the Shrine" jointly presented by Qiao Space and East Gallery in 2019, Zhang Yunyao used felt as a "canvas", painted graphite on it and finally painted it into a painting. The main works on display in the exhibition are the study and repeated depiction of body imagery. In these works, a technique of cutting and collage, once used by the Surrealists, was reinterpreted in Zhang Yunyao's creation, used to disassemble and stitch different statues, and then recombine them into a complete group portrait relationship, so that they can fiddle with the shapes needed by artists like live models.
Through this exhibition, you will find that Zhang Yunyao has long been familiar with the use of felt materials, and after a long period of research and experiments, Zhang Yunyao has sublimated it from a method-level technology to a conceptual level. In the eyes of connoisseurs, Zhang Yunyao adopts an irreversible "anti-painting" method. As we all know, felt materials cannot erase imprints, and can only be extremely cautious to "write without regrets". Therefore, such a creation is tantamount to "seeking trouble" in the eyes of others, but it is this bold form of creation that makes the three words "Zhang Yunyao" set off waves in the art circle again and again.
2021 West Bund Art Fair Wang Ningde's Solo Booth: Tangible Light
Cheng Xixing once asked several artists a question: "Do you remember the price of your earliest works of art?" "Hundreds? Or a few thousand? Perhaps, this specific number has been blurred, but today, more than a decade later, the works of these artists may have been extremely valuable in the market.
From obscurity to fame, it is the most tortuous "road to fame". Cheng Xixing always believes that the success of artists, in addition to talent and innate talent, every step should be steady and solid, "Quick success and short profit is the biggest 'enemy', Taoguang yang obscure is the right solution." ”
Here's the conversation between Forbes China and Cheng Xixing:
Forbes China: On social platforms, East Gallery has curated a number of "blockbuster" art exhibitions, what do you think is the reason behind them?
Cheng Xixing: In fact, we did not deliberately create a "blockbuster", nor did we deliberately cater to the entire market, what we have always insisted on doing is the quality content that we really want to do at the moment. I hope to be a disseminator and popularizer of art, and attract more audiences into the gallery through each exhibition. Whether it is young people or parents, bring groups of girlfriends and children to feel the power of art together.
Forbes China: In recent years, we have found that today's art collectors are becoming more and more young, in your opinion, what are the characteristics of young collectors in collecting art?
Cheng Xixing: We have been aware of such a trend since 2020, the younger generation of art collectors, many of them have studied abroad, their horizons are also broader, after the influence of foreign art atmosphere, the visual aesthetic of art is more international, subtly formed their own art identification system, can express unique insights on works of art. You may think that these young collectors prefer trend art, but in fact, more young collectors pay attention to works other than trend art, their tastes are very diverse, they will even pay attention to earlier artists, art is boundless for them.
Forbes China: How to better integrate the Internet to lay out online channels in the future?
Cheng Xixing: At the beginning of 2020, international travel was difficult, and we could not go abroad to enjoy art exhibitions everywhere, so in 2020 we joined the Artsy online platform to update and publish art works through online channels. To our surprise, in addition to the domestic audience browsing the online platform, some foreign art lovers will also come to ask for help, and even many overseas collectors directly order our works online. In the post-epidemic era, we will spend more energy and time to explore overseas resources through multiple channels, and export the works of our outstanding local artists to foreign markets.
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